Author: Annette Harrison
Cartographer: Irene Tucker

1 Introduction

Fulfulde is a language of the Niger-Congo family, in the West Atlantic branch.
In Senegal and Guinea the language is called Pulaar and Pular, respectively.
Seventeen African countries from Senegal to Sudan are home to Fulfulde speakers.
They are designated by names such as Haalpulaar’en, Fula, Fulbe, Peul,
Fulani, and Fellata. This is not the first attempt to map the location of Fulfulde
speakers in West Africa. In 1952 De Lavergne de Tressan gathered information
from various informants in what was then called the French Sudan. The CNRS (Centre
National de Recherche Scientifique) mapped the Fulfulde language continuum and
added the names of major dialect areas, information not included by De Lavergne
de Tressan. In addition, research organizations in several West African countries
have published atlases which include linguistic mapping of Fulfulde dialects
within those countries. This latest effort at mapping the Fulfulde dialect continuum
draws on these maps, library research, maps and database information from the
Ethnologue, and data from field linguists working in most countries where Fulfulde
is spoken. A bibliography follows.

In addition to the wide geographic area, the great challenge to mapping this
continuum consists more in the social dimensions and dynamism of the language.
Roger Labatut writes, “...ce n’est pas à la ‘géographie
linguistique’ qu’on devra avoir recours mais à une ‘sociographie
linguistique’... (Labatut 1973:165) [we are not dealing with “linguistic
geography,” but with “linguistic sociography”]. Fagerberg
(1979) grouped the sixteen Fulfulde dialects spoken in Senegal into three major “dialect
blocks,” which correspond to three distinct “cultures” and
lifestyles. This idea of grouping the dialects by “linguistic sociology”
and cultural-linguistic affinity seems a good one for a map like this. Instead
of splitting the continuum into as many subdialects as can possibly be identified,
we have attempted to group subdialects according to areas of clear communication
and shared socioethnic identity. “Clear communication” relates to
the linguistic concept of intelligibility which is based on the genetic relationship
between speech varieties. The more closely related the speech variety, the lower
the barrier to clear communication. This in turn allows for the use of one written
standard shared between those closely related speech varieties. By “linguistic
sociology” and “cultural-linguistic affinity” we mean that
factors such as traditional homeland, cultural heritage, lineage, occupation,
and religion strengthen bonds of self-identity, giving special cohesion to a
particular group of speakers so that variation in speech becomes relatively
unimportant to them. The ideal map of the Fulfulde continuum would be multidimensional,
depicting more layers of “linguistic sociology” and “cultural-linguistic
affinity” as well as the traditional map of “linguistic geography,”
allowing for the reality that in most locations parallel dialects of Fulfulde
are spoken.

Several Fulfulde dialect areas on the continuum have names, locations, and
general definitions that are more or less generally agreed upon by linguists,
anthropologists, and others. These are the Pulaar of Senegal, Pular of Guinea,
Fulfulde of Maasina, Fulfulde of Nigeria, and the Fulfulde of the Adamawa highlands
in Cameroon. Historically these were areas of Fulani political dominance at
some point; today they are part of modern West African nations where there are
large Fulani populations. These are also the areas where the Fulani and their
language are well documented resulting in a significant body of literature both
about the Fulani, their language and providing educational materials for literacy
programs. It is worthy to note that these materials are accessible to people
living outside of Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and Cameroon. In countries
such as Burkina Faso, Benin, and Niger, the Fulani and their language have also
been well documented, but in comparison the quantity of information and the
body of literature available is not nearly as significant as in the first group.
Documentation from countries such as Chad, the Central African Republic, and
Sudan appears more sparse and difficult to locate. For the areas which are best
documented, we hope we have done our homework well so that the Fulfulde dialect
areas are represented according to and in agreement with the many scholars in
these countries. For the remaining areas, particularly in Burkina Faso, Benin,
Niger, Chad, and the Central African Republic, most of the information comes
from people currently working in those countries.

Whenever possible we have followed the guideline of the "autonym" (what the speaker of the language calls his or her language), when labeling dialect areas. The difficulty is that when asked, most speakers simply say they speak "Fulfulde," whether a religious leader in a Senegalese urban locale or a nomadic herder in eastern Niger. We cannot label every division as "Fulfulde," so we have attempted to find some additional modifier used by Fulfulde speakers which often produces an autonym which is a derivative of historico-political identity or geographic location. For example, the name of the Fulfulde dialect spoken in the region where the towns of Dori, Burkina Faso, Tera, and Niger are found is derived from the historical name for that region, the Liptaako, to make "Liptaakoore." The Fulfulde spoken in northern Niger and parts of Chad, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic is identified by a name derived from the sociocultural class and heritage of its speakers, the Wodaabe, to make "Wodaande."

The Fulfulde map is an abstract representation of where we believe the speakers of these varieties to be geographically located. We have done our best to represent boundaries as "fuzzy" without allowing the indistinctness of a perceived line of linguistic change to be unhelpful in its vagueness. We have attempted to represent the gradually changing nature of a language continuum through graduating shades of color; the precise points of change cannot be said to be exactly represented on the map. Special acknowledgement and thanks are due to Irene Tucker as coauthor and cartographer for this project.

Azarya, Victor. 1993. Sedentarization and ethnic identity
among the Fulbe: a comparative view. In Unity and diversity of a people, edited
by P. K. Eguchi, and V. Azarya, 35-60. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.

Harper, Jennifer A. 1999. Recorded text testing of didactic
and narrative texts from Deftere Allah among Fulani of the Central Area (Zone
2) of Nigeria. Unpublished manuscript.

Hino, Shun'ya. 1986. Pilgrimage and Migration of the West
Africans: A case study of the Fellata People in the Sudan. In Morimichi Tomikawa
(ed.), Sudan Sahel studies II, 15-109. 4-chome Nishigahara, Kita-ku, Tokyo,
Japan: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages
and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).

Mortimore, M. J. 1972. Land and population pressure in the
Kano Close-Settled Zone, Northern Nigeria. In People and land in Africa South
of the Sahara, edited by R. Mansell Prothero. New York: Oxford University Press.

Osborn, W. Donald, David Dwyer, and Joseph I. Donoho. 1993.
A Fulfulde (Maasina)-English-French Lexicon. East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press.

Ogawa, Ryo. 1993. Ethnic identity and social interaction:
a reflection on Fulbe identity. In Unity and diversity of a people, edited by
P. K. Eguchi, and V. Azarya, 119-137. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.